Search Headlines & Links: October 24, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search
Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged
separately:

From The SEW Blog…

November Elections Mashups
Maps have long been important in politics, as anyone who works in politics or watches the TV coverage on election night knows. And then there’s the familiar saying, “All politics is local.” Now, as reported on the Google Earth Blog, Google Earth has added “U.S. Elections Guide” and “U.S. Congressional Districts” information layers. By selecting these layers in Google Earth (not available on Google Maps) you can see boundaries of U.S. voting districts, links to information and news about the candidates, where to vote, campaign finance data and other election-related information….

Google Gains Traction In Japan
InfoWorld reports that Google has “17.4 million users in September, up from 12.1 million in the same period a year earlier.” This gives Google the 10th spot in the Japan’s web property ranking. Google the 10th spot in the Japan’s web property ranking. The NetRatings study shows Yahoo Japan holding 23.6 million visits during the month. Google has the 3rd most page views of the top 10, with 2 billion page views for the month….

President George Bush Uses Google Maps To Get Away
Justin Uberti of Google linked to a Think Progress video where President George Bush said he uses Google Maps. The transcript reads: HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google? BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see – I’ve forgot the name of the program – but you get the satellite, and you can – like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes. You can watch the video at Think Progress….

New Yahoo Publisher Network Home Page
Yahoo has redesigned and reorganized the Yahoo Publisher Network home page. With the redesign comes integration of the most recent YPN Blog entries, public access to enhance your site, drive traffic to your site, build your site and earn money on your site. There is also a new flash tutorial to explain all about it. JenSense has more details and I have the forum coverage….

Google News Adds Link To Google Blog Search
Google News has added a link on the top right of the home page to Google Blog Search. Also, if you do a search on anything at Google News, such as [google custom search engine] you will see at the bottom of the results, “New! More ways to find the latest on google custom search engine:” and a link to “Search blogs.”…

New Yahoo Marketing Solutions Blog?
JenSense interviewed Steve Mitgang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the global team, regarding the new Panama release last night on her podcast (you can listen to it here). In any event, she noted that Steve Mitgang said a new Yahoo Search Marketing blog is going to be launched soon, and Jen guessed it would be at YSMBlog.com, like the YPN Blog is hosted at YPNBlog.com. So when I went to YSMBlog.com, I was redirected to http://ymsblog.com/, which is the Yahoo Marketing Solutions blog, with a link at the top to Yahoo Search Marketing and links down the right…

Google Offers Customized Search With A Social Twist
Google has long distributed its search engine on third-party content sites. But until today you could only search the individual site or the Web — and the branding on search results was practically all Google. Now Google will allow site owners to customize its search index and the look and feel of the results. Think industrial-strength Rollyo, with a twist of Swicki….

Become Adds Color Search
Become follows Etsy and Shopwiki in adding a search by color feature. Once consumers perform a shopping (as opposed to research) search, “a Color Search bar appears at the top right of the results page. Users can mouse over the color they desire from over 1000 shades to find exactly the red shirt, grey suit, pink shoes or pumpkin-colored dishes they want.” I have a screenshot posted at ComparisonEngines, but I encourage you to try it out for yourself by searching for a dress, handbag, or seven jeans. Here’s the press release. Become also recently redesigned its site….

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